How I’m doing

Well, the new oncologist seems to feel that I’m doing about as well as anyone could be compared with how I started. His description of my condition a year ago was hair raising.

Now, for those who know what “PSA” means, my current PSA was so low that it could not be accurately measured. The most recent CAT scan shows that the tumors are even a little bit smaller than they were last summer when the chemo therapy had just finished.  This is because of my daily testosterone blockers. He said my condition would be stable for maybe a few months, or maybe five years, or maybe ten years. It’s hard to predict.

There are some symptoms that continue because of the treatment – mainly fatigue, muscle pains, and joint pains, and some others whose description I’ll mercifully spare you from.  So I’m not likely to be going out to night-time concerts nor walking as far as I used to. He does want to check out these additional symptoms  with an MRI when I come back to Portland for Christmas and New Year’s.

These days, the most prominent pain that I’m nursing is a broken heart. Having decided to be vulnerable and open, well, that’s the risk, isn’t it?  And I don’t think that  testosterone blockers are going to help the situation, either.  Meanwhile I think I have a tremendous amount to devote to any sort of relationship. The mystery for me is why some don’t see it. (sigh)

Happy Advent

Advent is a sort of “countdown to Christmas.”  It’s a season that encompasses the four Sundays before Christmas, plus the days in between them. So if Christmas is the coming of God then Advent is a season of hope, a season that looks forward to light and life.

This year, in the Western tradition, Advent begins on Sunday, November 27 (the day I plan to return to California) and it’s celebrated until Saturday December 24. (before then, I plan to be back in Portland). Churches may present readings or prayers on the four Sundays, or on every day of the season. Also there are a huge number of ancillary activities, such as setting up Christmas Trees, stringing lights and displaying other decorations. All of these different advent traditions are meant to bring God to mind.

Literary Lessons

Concerning my tendency towards serial jokes, some have said that I’m just using humor to block out unpleasant or stressful situations. But I think it’s actually just a way to more thoroughly process information. This would explain why it’s so compelling for me — if I don’t make the joke, I won’t capture the entire meaning. Does anybody else – who’s not a standup comic – do the same thing?

One of my best friends recently told me that when she reads the Psalms (ancient Biblical poetry) God speaks to her through them. In contrast, in my life, God has usually spoken to me through events, which can be a bit rougher to deal with than reading a book.  For instance, the way this cancer was discovered leads me to think there’s a divine message there. I suppose that at least part of that message is “Get moving — time’s a’wasting!!”  So I’ve been taking some time to tell many of my old friends how much I care for them, how much I love them.  I wish I’d learned these lessons in vulnerability  (or been in a position to learn them) many years ago.  I would have avoided hurting some friends if I had.

Still Living in the Past

When I taught school at Schafer Park School. I took my class camping for a week at Point Reyes every spring. Several parents would come along as chaperons. This took some gumption on my part because one never knows what might happen. In fact, on my very first trip, one of the students was rehearsing a skit in the Quonset hut at left when he rolled off a couch onto the ground and broke his arm. One of the parents drove him to a hospital.

Luckily, over the years, my chaperons included folks like Gus Wright, Paige Adza, Karen Cauble, Kathy Amaral, Diane Evitt, Jim Lorts, Sylvia Boyd, Chuck Walker, Jeff & Judy Cook, Phil Arzino, Garry Horrocks, Dana Richardson, Fernando Lopez, Richard Wong, Isabel Souto, Deisy Bates, Robin Lewis, and many others, and especially, Kay Frye. (and by the way I love all of them) who worked and chaperoned to make the camping trips feasible.

I often use one of those trips, the third year’s, as evidence of God’s interventions in my life and in the lives of  people around me, solving problems that no one could do by themselves.

The Mosquito Eaters

The class was  extremely difficult to work with that year, mainly because of a small group of students who intimidated the rest, I’ll change the names of those five kids, even though they are all over forty years old by now.  They totally debunked the myth that “gifted and talented” students are all sweet, compliant nerds who just love homework.

Most of their bullying activities took place outside of class at recess. As I learned later, they had dubbed their gang the “mosquito eaters.” The name came from the name  of a teacher whom they continually disparaged  – Ms. Kido. The gang leader was Barry – a handsome kid with curly hair. His lieutenant was Cameron – a short dark-haired kid who usually wore a scowl below his shifty eyes. Waverly and Pearl were two girls with smirks of cattyness.  Finally, Riley was a follower, a goof-ball with a 1950’s hair cut. He wouldn’t be behaving badly if not for the bad examples of the other four.

They didn’t beat anybody up, they rarely even cut in line. But they wielded subtle put-downs like little dirt bombs, slipping them (metaphorically) into their victims’ minds. Gradually they convinced the rest of the class that they (the mosquito eaters) were the cool cats,  the classy ones with style, who even listened to records by the Beastie Boys, while the rest of the class was a bunch of loser nerds and dweebs who probably listened to the Beatles.

The thought of taking these kids to camp, and living with this little gang in close quarters for five days, sixty miles from the school, set my heart to despairing.

I  explained the situation (not using the kids’ names) to members of my prayer group at church. Meanwhile, planning continued for the camp.

The Solution

And then one day, Pearl came up to me during class. “Mr. Mac,” she said. “I can’t go camping this year.”My ears perked up. Camp had been scheduled for the week after spring vacation. Could this juxtaposition be the problem? It was.

Pearl said, “My cousin’s getting married in Oklahoma. The whole family’s going over there for two weeks.”  Well! This was news. I breathed a bit easier about how camp would go, though.

And then the next week, Waverly came up to me in class.  “Mr. Mac” she said. “I can’t go camping this year.”  What a shame! Why not? Waverly said, “My cousin’s getting married in Korea! the whole family’s going over there for three weeks.” I breathed even easier – now there were two fewer little gang members to deal with at camp.

Then, a week later, Barry brought a knife to school. He probably wasn’t going to do anything with it, except flash it around at recess to show that he was more cool than anybody else on the playground. Well, one of my students took courage and told the principal about it. Barry was brought down to the school office where it was determined that he did indeed have a knife, which was confiscated.  He was promptly suspended for a few days. But you know what? Kids who have been suspended can’t attend overnight field trips. Barry would spend that week by himself in another teacher’s classroom.

Riley and Cameron were the only ones left. Then Cameron got into some minor altercation with a student. I phoned his father about it after school. This would be a conversation that the two of us had had many times. He sighed and said, “Mr. MacFarlane,  I don’t know if Cameron has told you, but we moved to another city a couple months ago. We’ve been driving him back to Schafer Park School every day because he likes your class so much.  But we finally  gave him an ultimatum. Either he stop all these little screw-ups, or we’d send him to the normal neighborhood school for our area. He won’t be returning to Schafer Park after spring vacation.”

Cameron’s father had volunteered to bring some food for the camp. I was afraid he might forget or disregard it after the week-long vacation. But bring it he did on the day we left.   He was a man of his word.

Nobody else in the class would be missing camp that year. And now the only little gang member left was Riley.  But he was just a goof ball. I wasn’t worried about his behavior in the absence of his bad role models.

The Camp

The camp lasted five days. On the first day, it was a somber group of students who gathered at Pt. Reyes’s Clem Miller Education Center. By the next day, minus the mosquito eaters the mood had noticeably lifted . The many parent chaperons, as well as our student teacher, also proved to be good models, lifting the mood. but it was mostly the students themselves who accomplished the heavy emotional lifting. And every day, the group healed further, and eventually, even Riley had gotten “with it.”

The following week, the students who showed up for school that Monday was a group transformed through their positive experiences.   Barry was waiting, but the students took him in hand. They gave him no power over their self esteem. They ignored his insults. The following week, Waverley returned from Oklahoma and then received the same treatment.  A week later, Pearl returned from Korea and joined in the newly-positive atmosphere. And the positive vibes maintained themselves right through to the end of the year. Even Barry finished the year positively, transformed through their good example.

Many years later, Pearl stopped by Schafer Park School to visit her old teacher. She told me that ours was her favorite class ever.  It was gratifying to hear. Her positive memories were the product of the class itself as much as it may have been my own influence. It gave me faith that the other class members, including Barry and Cameron, had come out of the episode with a positivity that would last.

As for me, the message was that God would keep me in mind. It’s a message that I received at school many times over the years.

The requisite elephant video

Turns out that elephants love to chase antelopes

And Adam Neely posted one of his typically thoughtful essay- this one on music copyright.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greetings from California and Oregon,

How I’m doing

I’m like a bouncing ball —  A week in California, a couple weeks in Portland, then some weeks in California, all of it scheduled mainly around medical tests and procedures. Now I just arrived in Portland again. where autumn is in full display.

The picture, taken on Tuesday, shows downtown Portland from the west, with the Willamette River beyond. Across the River, follow a diagonally-oriented street up to the left. That’s Sandy Boulevard.  We live just off it, about eighty blocks from downtown.

In Portland this week, the vampires drew my blood, and the needlers injected a mysterious liquid into my hip. And on Saturday, they’ll take a CAT scan. Then on November 22, I’ll meet my new oncologist, who will tell me what. I’m so nervous that it might be bad. We’ll see, I guess.

Meanwhile, my toes have stopped losing their numbness. I guess it really is something I’m just going to have to live with. And meanwhile, my mother is hanging in there. My sister and I let her take us to lunch on Tuesday this week. I snapped the photo at left.

Significant Others

In psychology, a “significant other” is an influential person through whom one can grow.  A long time ago my friend Tamara told me that at one point I had been something like that to her. I rejoiced to hear it because she meant a lot to me. Any way that I could contribute to her life was a blessing to me, too.

Well, now I’m in a position where I need such significant others to help me grow, to help me unlock the emotional walls that I constructed over the years and now leave me trapped.

In California, such friends are blessedly close to hand. Here are five of them, whom I invited to dinner so they could meet the others that, unbeknownst, had also been supporting me for a half century on the other side of one of my emotional walls.

On the left, reflecting my musical side are Eileen & Mark ((French Horn & Baritone Horn).  And yes, musicians actually do assume personal identities based upon the instruments that they play.  I played saxophone.  That’s why I’m so incredibly hip.

Eileen and I played in the same high school music program back in 1966, and shared all the musical sorrows and joys of participating in every form of musical organization that our high school could devise, from marching band to orchestra, from rally band to Broadway pit band. Certainly if ever I forgot how to be joyful, I could get a clue from her.

On the right, reflecting my pedagogical side, are Karen & Jim. Yes, I did live in the same dormitory in Davis as Karen back in 1969. But their main significance to me now relates to the fact that in Hayward I taught their two kids, who bore up under the stress of my classroom in 1988-1990 and 1992 -1994.  Karen was one of those “super parents” who creatively went far beyond any common level of classroom support, such as making me an autograph book shaped like the Irish cap that I wore everywhere back in those days and filling it with messages from the students.

And in the center sits Ric, who reflects my church side. In fact I met Ric and Carolyn in 1980 at the First Baptist Church in Castro Valley. Over the years, they and their kids were like an extended family to me, a family with a shared faith, who improvised Bible studies, were addicted to literature and game playing, who always included me  on holiday meals, took me trick-or-treating (yes, they did!), accompanied me bird-watching, celebrated all my birthdays, took me square-dancing, went camping together, helped hammer my classroom together, and so many etc.’s

I could have invited more people, but it wasn’t practical. Whenever I return to Castro Valley I’ll pick up where I left off.

All these people were critical to my life for the past half century, and they live just a few miles from each other. How could they not know each other? (he asked rhetorically). The three domains that they represent I had walled off from each other. But I kept the key, so now I can introduce them to each other and also to you. They and others help me to heal emotionally, to be comfortable with vulnerability and open expression, so eventually I can safely “throw away the key” altogether, leaving all the walls wide open.  It’s something that I cannot put off any more, like I have for the last half a century.  My mortality has told me this.

Training in Vulnerability

There’s nothing like a confrontation with one’s mortality to remind one that if one wants to accomplish something in this life, there’s probably less time available for it than one might think.

For me, I want to stitch together the fractured community that I already have. Then I need to take courage and be more transparent and vulnerable and emotionally forthright in my dealings with people.  These things will become the strength that I need to finish (hopefully) the tasks that have been set before me.

Openness and vulnerability. My psychologist was helping me with that. Then she moved away. But then Eileen assumed that task (did I mention that she’s wise beyond her years, and has been since high school?). I’m becoming myself  and emotionally healthy for the first time in many years.

This is what I mean by vulnerability:

In 1975 I was riding in a train through the Italian Alps. Back then, train cars were divided into compartments, like in a Harry Potter film. I stared out the windows at the mountains floating by, and I remembered that just one other person occupied that compartment — a young woman with thick brown hair, dark brown eyes, and  full lips, modestly dressed.

I don’t remember who spoke first, but it turned out that she was a German speaker from Bozen (Bolzano), a mostly-German-speaking  city in northern Italy. She was on her way home now. I was intrigued. I’d never heard of Germans as a minority community in Italy. We sat together.

The conversation drifted from Germans and  wended its way through every part of our lives. She was just so happy and wholesome. It was infectious.

Suddenly, the train entered a tunnel and all was plunged into darkness. We melted into a comfortable embrace and deeply tasted each other’s mouth. She said I had a sweeter taste than anyone she’d ever known. She, on the other hand, tasted kind of salty, but I still love to find that flavor again in my memory.

I said maybe I should stick around home more, so when something magical like this happened again I could build upon it. Eventually she changed trains for Bozen. And ever since then, I’ve regretted letting her go like that. I should have followed her to Bozen. But I lacked the confident vulnerability to confront a situation full of unknowns. But She could be much more than a lovely memory. Or not. I’ll never know.

Just telling this story also makes me feel quite vulnerable emotionally, which is why you haven’t heard it before. Yet by locking it away, along with a few more kind of like it, I’ve tucked away a romantic side to me which a lot of people might not suspect that I even possess. It’s scary to be so revealing, but then my significant others will know more fully who I really am.  And maybe I’ll learn more about them, as well.

Movie Night

This train episode, as well as some other such episodes in Europe, brings to mind one of my favorite movies, “Before Sunrise.”,  the most resolutely romantic movie I know. I featured it in my “Movie Nights” at Tianjin University. It depicts a world that I really know. Or knew, anyway. It’s a movie for those who care to love.

Its sequels are pretty good, too, though I once showed the first sequel to a group of Chinese students in China, and a small group of party members who had stopped by “just to check” and it turned out to feature language that was not really appropriate to that audience. I hadn’t known that. Luckily their English skills were such that they probably couldn’t understand those parts, anyway. Probably.

No Jokes

Another somewhat hidden part of my personality is actually “hidden in plain sight.” It’ my propensity to concoct serial humor. Out of any three phrases I speak, usually one of them is a joke. Eileen has suggested that I might construct such serial snarkfests as a defense against the vulnerabilities of life.  That might be, but from my point of view, I spin jokes because it reminds me that life is a miracle, and the happiness that jokes bring to me celebrates that life.

I remember once in high school, in the band room (of course — where else?), several of us musicians were talking about nothing in particular. My best buddy at the time was Gary. Well no wonder, because we both played clarinet and saxophones. (remember that a musician’s instrument can determine his identity) His face lit up with the excitement of discovery. Looking at me he suddenly shouted, “You’re a clown. You’re really a clown!  Hey, everybody, he’s a clown!” I knew what he meant. It was not an insult at all. He’d just caught onto my serial humor. I was just so glad that my good friend had realized what I was up to.

So I recently went out to dinner with my sister Abbe, my brother-in-law Don, and their friend Mary. We all had burgers, to which Abbe added her favorite kale salad. But the salad wasn’t as tasty as in previous weeks.  The leaves seemed thin and weak. She called the waitress to find out “what’s the deal?”

Well, turns out it was no longer kale, but “baby kale,” a less tasty variant. They had changed the menu. Abbe was not at all happy. So I said, ” When it grows up, will you reinstate it on the menu?”

Abbe thinks it’s my deadpan delivery that keeps people from realizing it’s a joke. Maybe. I do know that Mary was the only one who laughed that night, and for that, she deserves to be taken out to lunch.  I’ll get right on it.

The missing sociology review

Well, usually at the end of my update, I write about an aspect of American society. But I need a break from that. And besides, this month’s update is self-centered on my own personal “issues,” rather than on general and commonly experienced situations so it wouldn’t fit.

And I need to finish healing emotionally if I’m to have a chance of finishing the tasks that have been set before me. And when I say heal, I mean that I’ve been in literal pain in various parts of my  body for a very long time, since before I returned from China.  As my emotions and vulnerabilities heal, the pain abates, I get my balance back, and as I accept and express my own feelings, my mind works faster.  It’s thrilling but a little bit scary when I let it loose to gallop wherever it may. Can I trust it?

And I’m so thankful, both to God and to my friends on this list, for providing the support that has subdued the pain and has given me a chance to work again, and has also expanded my chest (metaphorically) to carry the joy in the world that surrounds me. I just wrote my friend Rob that, actually, I’ve never been happier. How could that be? Last winter I didn’t expect to even be alive at this point, let alone in a position to feel such joy.

Tonight, for the first time in many many years, My mind felt clear enough to enjoy playing a kids’ game (called slapzi) with my sister and brother-in-law, my nephew  and his daughter. They all appear in the photo at right. I was almost overcome by emotion.  It’s been so many many years since I’ve felt clear-headed enough to play a game of any kind.  I wish Ric’s wife Carolyn were here, because after years of declined invitations I’m finally ready to play a game that she’d arranged for everybody.

So thank you, everybody.  I will do all I can to finish the tasks before me. And I’m still listening to music again. Life is a miracle.

Pachyderm  Pleasures

I almost forgot the elephants of HERD in South Africa.  This time the peaceful atmosphere comes from the early morning sun as Khanyisa, no longer sleeping inside, comes from the herd to fetch her breakfast.